If they were the US would have been seeded at the 2006 WC. They'll be cited as the reason for the seed if FIFA likes the seeds. However if FIFA doesn't like what that implies, FIFA will seed the teams they want.
Finally got a chance to search out the player ratings. Kind of disappointing number for a US/MEX qualifier, but the usual suspects are there. Cameron - 7.7 Bradley - 7.7 Gonzalez - 6.7 Ream - 6.7 Acosta - 6.5 Beasley - 6.2 Yedlin - 6.0 Pulisic - 5.9 Guzan - 5.4 Arriola - 5.3 Nagbe - 5.3 Wood - 5.1 Altidore - 5.0 Zusi - N/R
I've always thought this was strange. You'd think we'd be pretty comfortable in Europe. First world western countries, most similar to America, people speak English, etc. Now that most of our players play in Europe, you'd think Europe would be the best place for us aside from USA.
anyone else get the feeling that maybe bruce was secretly helping JK coach the USMNT? or at least one of JK's "go-to's" for advice? can a reporter ask bruce how much Bruce and JK talked during JK's reign? they were both in cali. and JK did seem to go to LAG matches more than other MLS teams. the team has a lot of similarities under both coaches. i think bruce is clearly better but i also think a lot of what i didn't like about JK is there in Bruce too. i really dont like the fact that both coaches believe that the US team has no shot at winning a world cup. yeah, statisticallly and historically, its not looking good. but if you dont beleive you can win championships...you NEVER will. there are other simliarities between the two but will leave it there for now.
The problem is if Bruce or Jeurgen say that the USA will win the World Cup, then when the USA is knocked out of the tournament, it will be rubbed in our faces for the next 4 years by everyone and his mother, especially by the Euros and Hispanics. I don't even want to imagine how insufferable the trolling would get. Given our talent level at the moment, it would be especially stupid to put a gigantic bulls eye on the team's back.
well yeah...there's no point in saying the us WILL WIN the world cup. BUUUUT coming and saying the team you are coaching HAS NO CHANCE...is different. JK publically stated the US had no chance of winning the tourney before the 2014 WC and Bruce recently said the US will have a chance in 2026. the problem isnt only that they said these things....it's that these coaches TRULY BELEIVE that there teams have no chance...and they STRATEGIZE ACCORDINGLY. if your strategy incorporates a belief that you have no chance of winning ....you wont win. like EVER. maybe the us only has a 1 or 2% chance of winning a world cup with its current level of talent...but if your coach thinks it is 0%...it becomes 0%. strategically, you need to cherish that 1 or 2 % for what it is and do everything MAXIMIZE it...not wipe it off the table completely with a defeatist attitude from jump. i want to watch a team that believes it can win and plays accordingly...not like little scared chicken cuz the coach of the team has an inferiority complex.
It may have more to do with the European teams being MORE uncomfortable when they play outside of Europe than the US players playing outside or inside of Europe. In other words, the US level can be thought of as the same playing in Europe or South America or Africa, but the European players face a slight drop in performance when traveling far from Europe. The European players do travel a lot in club soccer or European qualification games, but that travel is essentially all within Europe. US players regularly face far greater travel distances and greater changes in climate and environment. And, since the Euro teams account for basically half the total at any World Cup, it really helps the USA if half the competition is performing slightly lower than usual in those Cups outside Europe.
Stay classy Osorio . . . Mexico boss Juan Carlos Osorio apologizes for cursing on camera http://www.espnfc.com/mexico/story/...arlos-osorio-apologizes-for-cursing-on-camera "I want to take the opportunity to offer an apology to all the TV viewers," Osorio said. "Evidently I went too far, specifically with one of their assistants ... We always understood and respected their playing idea, a very direct type of football, with a lot of contact. "But when [the assistant] crossed the line and it becomes an outrage against Fair Play, that's where the limit in accepting things reaches." The Colombian manager wouldn't state the exact words that were used, but said New Zealand's assistant knew exactly what they were.
This one kind of smells compared to previous consensus media ratings. I looked for WS ratings but couldn't find any. Do you know if Who Scored does ratings for Concacaf quali's?
If we want to win the WC with a low percentage, we'd have to play like Greece/Leicester and I believe that you/Rubin call that cowardly/chicken rather than astute and strategic. I'm guessing you don't favor Moneyball style analytics either.
No reason to fetishize the matter, IMO. We had problematic teams on each occasion we've qualified for a UEFA WC and winning WC games is a rare thing in general.
well no...i think analytics can be useful...and i think a sport like baseball lends itself more to analytics than others. i think soccer analytics have not "caught up to the game" yet. soccer just isnt a game that can 100% explained with stats. there are too many layers of things to look at and how do you quantify cooperation and teamwork? how do you convert (secret) coach instructions and player execution of those instructions to what happens on the field to a number? i think JK was in love with analytics and it made him seem like a moron. any analytics are only as good as the quality of how they are set up. can they actually mirror reality? if not, they are not helpful. my point about playing with 25% possession and kicking the ball upfield anytime it is with 40 yards of your own goal is that that strategy IS NOT THE ASTUTE STRATEGY...it is NOT THE MONEYBALL STRATEGY...it is, in fact, the strategy that 100% gaurantees the usmnt will win nothing. i think i am in the minority on that. i think people look at greece and leicester and say well if you are not as talented the only chance is to play like that. but for the usmnt to win a world cup it will never happen by bunkering. it might help the us get to second round or maybe even a QF...but thats the BEST case scenario...and my point is by adopting that strategy it also eliminating the possibility of a truly successful campaign before it even starts. for a one-off game...it can work. for a whole tourney...it is like waving the white flag and basically saying we have no chance at all and we are happy winning one or two games.
Why couldn't the US be successful emulating Greece/LC? What is it that they did over a tournament / season that we couldn't do? Perhaps I'm not understanding your perspective, but is that not "bunkering" as you describe it?
i don't really want to delve deep here but I think what JK did vs. good teams is field a very conservative team and then instructed them to play "on the front foot" and build via a ground based possession game (using MB as the fulcrum). So it was exactly the opposite of "bunker ball" in that we tried to maintain possession as that is the USA DNA; ironically, it made us look even more defensive as we set ourselves up to be pressed in our third and then frequently turned the ball over in bad spots and had to scramble defensively. Crazy town. If we're playing a conservative line-up, our strategy should be conservative; if we want to play possession, we have to field a team with strong possession skills.
it might produce a one-off tourney victory...(there are no seasons)....but the fact that it hasnt in 30 years i think should tell the story. its just a very negative and imo AN INEFFECTIVE strategy. its like prevent defense in nfl football...it just prevents winning. even if the usmnt managed to bunker its way to a tourney victory...what does that lay the foundation for? a perpetual bunker team that always has to get lucky to win? and cant play toe to toe against big teams? what kind of team is the usmnt building towards? my preference is that the us plays aggressivley and confidently and takes the game to opponents and that style is the style of the whole program at every level...and yeah it will come with growing pains...and yeah it will raise the chance of blowout losses...but it will also lay the foundation for future success and in the long run will increase the team's chacnes of doing well and winning tourneys. i really dont care if the usmnt makes the first round of the world cup and loses or makes the second round of the world cup and loses, while playing conservatively...it doesnt move my needle at all. to me, the tradeoff isnt play bunker with better odds of winning vs play attractive with lower chances of winning.....my point is that bunkering decreases the odds of real success...and the only justification for bunkering is increased odds of results...my point is that the supposed benefits of bunkering are illusory....and ultra-conservative tactics are the real reason the program hasnt made signifcant progress in 30 years.
i agree with you....i think picking conservative lineups is almost akin to bunkering though....picking players you know cant play possession and telling them to try anyway is borderline bunkering in my book. the opposite of bunkering would be playing with no dmid and 4 offensively capable midfielders and 2 forwards and 4 defenders who can passs and dribble etc and not boot the ball etc....something we havent seen in a long time if ever....
The Euro has a history of producing unfancied champions. The World Cup does not. Style has nothing to do with this.
Actually, Klinsmann argued the case exactly as you put it. (bolded). At some point that case was interpreted as an excuse for failure. My own feeling is that Klinsmann failed because he was afraid to call in MLS players which left him playing with guys like Alvarado, JF Torres, et al. The problem with analytics is that they become self serving, self referential or whatever fancy term you want to use to describe a situation where the game changes to fit analytics. That is a topic for a long discussion. The short version is that the game can become boring as everybody moves to the same analytics which is more economically secure than taking risk.
Osorio outcoached again . . Mexico unprepared for early onslaught as Germany rolls on to Confederations Cup final https://www.si.com/planet-futbol/20...erations-cup-semifinal-goretzka-werner-osorio For most of the game Mexico looked like a team that may have had a plan, but didn't have enough familiarity between the players on the field to turn that plan into reality. There may be something to that. Osorio has come in for a lot of criticism during his tenure for his insistence on rotating his squad from match to match. It's a practice he's carried over into the Confederations Cup, and, in fairness, his players seem to be buying into it (plus, he was forced into some decisions with Andres Guardado suspended and Carlos Salcedo and Diego Reyes out injured). Against a team with as much depth, quality and consistency as Germany, though, the flaws of that approach were laid bare. It might not have won El Tri the game, but it might have made a dent. Follow FOX Soccer ✔@FOXSoccer What went wrong for #ElTri? Juan Carlos Osorio speaks to @FX_Rivera after losing in the #ConfedCup semis. #GERMEX 4:34 PM - 29 Jun 2017 3333 Retweets 103103 likes
I agree that no manager should tell his team winning is impossible. The US does very well as an underdog but underdog implies unlikely but not impossible. What Klinsmann said was not right. It is fine to compliment the other team(s) say all kind of nice things but also push the notion that if we execute the perfect game we have a chance. I believe the main reason for Klinsmann's statements were to reduce expectations in case of failure. I'm not sure how others read Arena's statement but I took it to mean that the US has a realistic chance to win the world cup in 2026....in other words, it would be a reasonable expectation that we would be contenders. Whether reasonable is 1 in 10 chance, 1-20 chance or whatever, I don't know. In my mind, he isn't addressing 2018 at all but I believe Arena is very good at playing the underdog card with his teams and I don't expect his message to the team or the public to be that we can't win. Right now, he has been avoiding talk about Russia as much as possible and instead has emphasized the qualifiers. I think that is the right approach.
Germany generally "sat in", selectively forced turnovers, then broke. It was a good enough for the champs, albeit their b-team, against El Tri. They just executed better (4-1 and 38% possession vs. 1-1 and 24%), in part because they had better ball winners, overall team speed, and more killers in the final 3rd (also didn't hurt they weren't playing in Azteca). We may not have reached Germany's, even their b-team's, level, but could have upgraded our ability in those departments if maybe if we switched out Acosta for Cameron in cm, Johnson for Beasley at lb, Nagbe for Arriola; and things like that. Some people take it as a point of pride to be the ones building up and having x amount of possession, but there's really nothing wrong with letting your opponent have the ball first and then playing them, especially if you're playing Mexico in Azteca. Tough game, and it's an opponent you know is not great at breaking down a bunker, has a tendency to take a lot of low % long-distance shots, and struggles against speed/in space. Some of the best teams in the world take the same approach against Mexico, or other opponents. Heck, they've done it against us. Colombia and Brazil did it against us in routs on our field. Let us build up for a bit then trapped us. Actually had the edge in possession over Colombia, but who cares. They obviously didn't. The result against Mexico was very deserved because it's a game of chances. I don't think we should ever necessarily aspire to possess against Mexico because it's a pointless competition. At least on the road, and maybe home to, we should just aspire to win the ball more, counter in more control and w/ more efficiency, circle back if we need to in order to get numbers in the attack, and finish efficiently. Let them have more possession than us. They're slower and smaller, so it's easier for them to control the ball in tight spaces, and it's the only way they can really play. That's why they struggle in bigger competitions come the ko stages.
Good post. Germany used the same gameplan, just executed much more ruthlessly. Everyone knows how Mexico's going to play; they're playing style is a point of pride, but makes 'em predictable. As I mentioned earlier, tactical diversity is a benefit for the US right now. We don't have to play a particular style.